Man gets 6-month sentence for ramming car into Jewish group’s N.Y. world headquarters

The judge cited a psychiatric report he reviewed and said Dan Sohail’s mental health challenges “played an important role” in his decision-making.

A New Jersey man was sentenced Wednesday to six months and a week behind bars for ramming his car into the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters, the Jewish institution in New York where his lawyer said he’d been trying to win acceptance as he struggled with psychological issues.

Dan Sohail, 36, was sentenced in Brooklyn federal court by a judge who declined a recommendation by prosecutors that he force Sohail to remain behind bars for another eight months. The sentence clears the way for the New Jersey man, who has already spent six months in detention, to be released in about a week.

Prosecutors had sought a stiffer sentence as a wider warning to those who might attack Jewish interests amid a dramatic rise in hate crimes against the Jewish population.

Judge Eric N. Vitaliano said he was “somewhat saddened” to see that the Justice Department wanted him to be influenced at sentencing by a mistaken initial impression among the wider public that the Jan. 28 attack was a hate crime.

No one was injured when Sohail drove his car into the Chabad Headquarters’ side entrance five times, knocking the door off its hinges and destroying his car’s front bumper. Before he drove toward the building, he waved passersby away, a fact the judge mentioned at sentencing as he ordered him to pay $20,000 restitution.